Prison system entering $10 million contract with project team

The Alabama Department of Corrections is planning to enter a $10 million contract with Hoar Program Management of Birmingham to help develop a long-range plan for the prison system.

The contract, which would run through February 2020, is on the agenda for Thursday’s meeting of the Legislature’s contact review committee.

The ADOC first hired Hoar Program Management in March to lead a project management team and do an assessment of the prison system’s needs. The new agreement will be an amendment to that contract, which was for about $1.5 million.

The contract was part of Gov. Kay Ivey’s initiative to come up with a master plan to solve the state’s long-running problem with aging, crowded and understaffed prisons.

Former Gov. Robert Bentley had proposed building several large prisons and closing most of the existing prisons. The Legislature considered several alternatives to Bentley’s plan but none were approved.

ADOC spokesman Bob Horton said Hoar Program Management and the team has completed the first phase of its assessment of the prison system’s needs.

That included assessments of inmate population, current staffing levels and future staffing requirements, condition of the prison system’s infrastructure and deferred maintenance costs, current operational costs and future operational cost savings.

The ADOC has not yet released any information on those findings. Horton said the release of that information is pending.

The contract amendment will allow the team to begin work on the second phase of the assessments, Horton said.

The contract review committee can raise questions about proposed contracts and can delay them temporarily but cannot block them.